Hardest Trad Flash Ever | Adam Ondra | Lexicon E11

Welcome to the UK Country where lots of climbers embrace this weird style of climbing called Treadclimbing Using only the natural protection, which is sometimes reasonable Sometimes very sketchy, sometimes close to each other, sometimes very far It's an interesting game and in order to fully enjoy it you have to embrace Overcoming the fear Climbing on the sport routes, I rarely ever get to experience this fear But here in UK, I have a route in my mind where I think, you know The balance between the fear and danger will be just perfect I first came up to Pavey in 2021 to have a look at the classic route here, Impact Day And when I was abseiling down the face I just noticed this blank line on the headwall Which was clearly unclimbed, it was still covered in lichen And so I got pretty excited, I started brushing off the lichen And found these little micro-crimps and realised it would go The thing that was just so obvious about it was the huge runout up the headwall It's actually twice as big as the runout that you do on Impact Day and that route gets E8 And so it was a matter of, could I do something that was that close to my sport limit with such a big runout I went halfway up the runout, jumped off, went a little bit further, jumped off And then I didn't dare go any further, it was a case of when I got to that point On the lead, I was just going to keep going Hello! Hi buddy, how's it going? What a place! Enjoy the walk? Yeah It's nice, really nice I first heard about Lexicon just after Neil did it And from the first picture of it I thought this would be a really good candidate to have, you know This perfect balance between danger and fear and margin of safety I mean, obviously not many people know we're here And the few people who are close to me who I've said I'm going to be belaying you on this for a flash and they're like What? You're going to be doing what? The lower section is what we would call an E6 in the UK Which roughly translates to French 7a climbing, but with quite poor protection But the climbing isn't physical, there's a few places you can rest But yeah, the gear is quite bad and quite spaced But that leads you up to the crack where you place the last gear And then all the difficult climbing comes above that There's no crux, it's just sustained on small side pulls, like little crystals And then you get to the point, like three moves below the top And this is the point where you have to make the decision Because at this point, if you don't feel like you've got enough energy to finish it You have to jump off and that's a huge fall You don't want to take that fall, but you'd have to take that chance Rather than carrying on, like thinking that you couldn't do it And entering a really dangerous situation From this slope, you stretch up to a really small crimp It's like four mil, it's tiny Build your feet, little pocket, and then you throw for this slot And that move just takes coordination You have to go slightly sideways and flick it a little bit And if you were shaky there, you'd just ding the lip of that thing Yeah, you'd be in the air a long time Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God Oh no, I can't ******* believe this Oh my word, oh what, what, what And yeah, I ended up making the first ascent It was undoubtedly the hardest thing I've ever climbed It's the hardest thing I ever will climb I'll never do something harder than that I was always going to relax up to that point and say Oh, if I fall, it's just a big fall, who cares, it's just a big fall But relax, relax, relax, get to that point And then engage a totally different mode It's like, if I don't feel... Just like basically overgrip Overgrip, overgrip, like rinse the tank And it's like, get to that point And if I think I get one of those feelings that I can't make it I have to jump, which is going to be really ******* scary But better than risking it Whereas if I do get to that point and I feel OK It's like, OK, I've got to climb to the top now And it's a different, it's like survival You know, you're really, you engage a whole different mindset For that last, those last two moves And especially that move to the start Yeah, what's the hardest physical move? Like lower down or? Or it's sort of like pretty homogenous It's totally sustained Yeah, that's why it's climbed so well It's, you know, flowing You know, it's like doing three Fond 7B boulders Yeah, yeah Back to back And there's no like stopper move, you know Unless you've got a hold wrong You know, if you get the holds right And you get the sequence right It's a sustained endurance based thing And so by definition, the last move is the crust Because that's when you're most fatigued And also the last move does have a slightly A slight coordination element to it, you know I discussed this point of no return with James Pearson Who made the fourth ascent of the route And I always thought in my mind like Yes, if you feel bad, you just jump off And you are safe And James insisted that I would not jump down That no matter how bad you're feeling You just really want to keep pushing I think there is a very strong tendency To just keep pushing no matter how bad you're feeling I set off to just do a practice go To try and sort out the gear And work out what the bottom wall is going to be like And how it would feel And I got there Made a total mess of the gear But thought it's probably all right And then I thought I don't feel too bad actually Now maybe I'll just do a few moves and see what happens And then I did a few moves And then you just can't stop You just go and you go and you go And suddenly I was totally in the zone Go on Will you survive? He came really close to the ground He missed the ground by about two meters At one point he was just coming down towards me And I actually thought he was going to land on my head And yet there's still one more move to go after that So the margins are really tight Neil rappelled along Lexicon To start cleaning the holds Choking them up And showing me the moves Just as I was hanging around eight meters to the right In the neighbouring route So I could get a better view of it For the ethical reasons It was really important for me that I'm far enough from the route When Neil is showing me the moves and holds This is the point where you place your last bits of gear Before the run out And what you've got is a smallish cam on the left here Your main point is this one Which is a little yellow cam goes in there Okay Now obviously that's quite a small piece of gear So what you want to do is You back it up with a bigger one which is over on the side But the thing is that has to be extended Otherwise you'd get too much drag So you basically cluster these three pieces together And that's it You don't want to go too far past it But there's a little bit of... Alright And it's three, yeah? It's front three And then you're stepping up You're into this Big foot And then the top's like a bucket Yeah Alright Let's do it Psyched! It's quite different Normally when I go for a flash I sort of knew I have to go all in There is definitely this element of danger And being conscious about this last hard move Where it would be nice not to fall As Neil said, up to the last move I think it will feel the same as going up on a sport climb Hopefully I will not mess up Putting this cluster of gear at the break That's maybe the thing that I'm most worried about But on the other hand, the break looks good enough So even if I make a slight mistake and I need to readjust it It shouldn't cost too much energy And then the climbing looks... Looks hopefully also that the beta will fit my style I think the only doubt is Is actually the last hard move There are more foot options And I think that's the only part Where I kind of follow my intuition You can have those on the right Go and place these first Because they are the good ones Yeah These are the good ones And again do that one Like that So maybe have those on the right And the other two on the left Yeah Suddenly there was just this moment of calm Before Adam went for it And there has to be that moment of calm Everybody just needs to chill down And then it dawns on you what's about to happen And you see this guy at the bottom And he's racking up his gear And you think he's got to go up that And there's no top rope He hasn't top roped it first He's got to lead up that And it's the 11 And nobody's done that before Like you don't have any reference points You don't have anything to compare it to Like no human being's ever done this And that was weird You know, and you're kind of Trying to keep the mood light hearted A little bit of a joke But not too Yeah, knowing what to say to each other And like when you make eye contact Before the route It's a really strange feeling And I think it was the best bit Was when you just started climbing Some jugs at the top But there is a sloper on the left if it helps you But it's a bit slopey where the chalk is And you can place the RP there But you might just want to keep going, Adam I think just keep going So the red can with the sling Yeah, nice Adam Yeah, cool The small red one all the way to the bottom You got it, all the way to the back on the left Yeah, good work Adam You're on the gui gui I was scared I mean, it didn't feel as solid as I was hoping I'll be absolutely honest Having climbed the route One of the first things I thought about That night when I went home Was that someone could flash it And that that would represent the future And at some point that would happen And it might actually happen quite soon And of course I thought of him Because I know him and I've climbed with him And I know how he walked up these routes on the grit In the sun, like on sighting E7s Like he was out walking his dog, you know And so yeah, he was such an obvious candidate But he's a busy guy He's getting pulled in all different directions You know, come here Adam, try this route You know, with his family and everything else It's like, would he come? And I'm obviously never going to say Come and try my route But I'm kind of suspecting that maybe one day I'm going to get that message And then sure enough the message appeared on my phone And it was like, right then, here we go I'm a kind of person that definitely enjoys Being scared at least a bit It is addictive, at least in climbing for me But you always need to be aware of the danger And I got it right here But you know, maybe I was just lucky And it's hard to tell how much I want to do Some objectively dangerous routes in the future But in this case, it was definitely worth it